house of sand
by mergoat1505
Summary: A lightening rod – grounded, safe, loyal, protective, but still arcing towards the storm.


AN: Entire chunks of italicized writing indicates a flashback.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's terrible and such. I'm not making money off of this either, which sucks because I'm broke. So, onwards. Mush little doggie muses, mush.

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Mikaela Banes and Sam Witwicky.

Even our names sound weird together. There's no meshing, no cohesion. We sound like separate entities, polar bodies endlessly orbiting each other, but never touching.

Never touching, never drifting apart, and never ever spinning out of alignment.

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Frigid air nips, playful. Gooseflesh raises on the strips of skin left bare by my bleach bone battle armor. Fibrous cables of nerves wired in my spine jolt. I shiver.

Years have passed but that means nothing to the desert and its bleak skies. Rivulets of heat baked sand have been working in slow discordant thrum since we left Tranquility, replacing my marrow grain by grain until glass slugs through my veins.

Alaska – it's no place for a desert dweller. But I don't long for home. Not anymore, at least.

"Geez, has anyone 'round here heard of a little thing called hypothermia? I swear, even Mr. Freeze would crank up the thermostat in this ice box." Sam grunts, lips mottled blue and purple as his own temporary exoskeleton is screwed into place.

"DC comics, huh? Does that mean those magazines you've got stuffed in that little black box of yours aren't really magazines after all? Why Sammy, I never would've pegged you for having a men-in-spandex kink."

"K-Kaela, what-? You-? I don't even – no, just, _no_. I- just, no." Sam squawks. I draw out a curled, predatory grin.

"Is _that_ why you always pay Yancy a visit before a drop? Admit it, you just want to see your little beau in a dive suit, don't you?"

A choir of chuckles, muted chuffs of good-natured amusement, come from the hoard of techs buzzing in and out of view.

But the teasing isn't senseless. It gives Sam a distraction to focus on, like a life preserver of sorts.

It makes him forget about the frailty of the future, for the moment.

Sam sends me a withering look but his ears tinge pink, vibrant as stalks of rhubarb Nana uses in her homemade jam. I wink and slip my helmet on. He huffs, cheeks puffed out in exasperation, but cracks a tiny, lopsided smirk before my vision is temporarily obscured by a syrupy, yellow liquid draining from my visor.

As we march to our launch depot my heart thunders pitter-pit-pat because, even now, we're rebounding off each other, like children dipping their toes into a placid-calm pool, creating intersecting ripples.

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_We should be asleep, gearing up for our first simulation tomorrow, not talking through the night. _

"_Hey, Sam..."_

_Our results will decide if, well, if we're meant to be co-pilots._

"_Yeah?"_

_In five hours I'll be in his head. He'll be in mine. Any boundaries we have left will be shredded in the pull of the Drift, or at least that's what our instructors claim. We're so close to the end game that, at this point, insecurities seem pointless. Silly even._

"_You know I'll never leave you, no matter what, right? If you ever want to back out, if this gets to be too much for you... I'll bow out too."_

"_I know, Kaela, I know."_

_Sam's always been the weakest link – mentally, physically. But, emotionally? I cling too tight._

_He dangles a hand over the side of his top bunk. I reach up and grab it, smoothing my thumbs over the calluses he earned from working summers in the family garage._

_Touch, it's a small comfort._

"_Promise?" _

"_Promise."_

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Drifting with Sam is like draining a tall, iced glass of sweet mint tea. Cool and refreshing, it tempers the arid haze of a summer afternoon.

Snippets of memories dash by like jackrabbits. Familiar faces are splashed across every nook and corner of Tranquility as tangy-sweet reminders (not bitter, never bitter because that implies regret). But above it all he's there – boisterous but trepidatious and wholly imperfectly Sam – crowding out the niggling doubts I keep locked up, tight as a drum.

We move as one, extending one of Dune Rifter's sickle-armed fists towards the weeping skies.

I breathe in.

Sam exhales.

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_I was apprehensive before. What would I drag into the Drift – baggage unchecked and cracked wide open for Sam to view?_

_What could he possibly see in me?_

A lightening rod – grounded, safe, loyal, protective, but still arcing towards the storm.

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Sam breaks his promise to me and I to him in a deluge of sparks and icy water and Kaiju blue.

"Kaela, listen to me-"

Then he's gone, flung to the frothing depths. I want to sink _down down down _until the Pacific rushes in my ears but Marshal Pentecost's orders come ringing back like a klaxon bell.

Two million people. Men and women and children, fathers and mothers and sons and daughters are all depending on me to slay the monster – _Christ._

An echo of a hand, warm and work-worn but still gentle, always gentle, slides over my own, guiding me and my movements.

"_Fight," Sam urges. "Fight and then you can rest, Kaela."_

And I do.

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There's an itch in my skin. A voice in my head. A dead man in my heart.

I've never felt so cold.

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"Here."

Tendo – mother hen, bow tie wearing, fellow coffee addict Tendo – grabs my hand, my good hand. The other is nothing but fried meat strung up in a sling; a lattice of ropey burns covers my left arm from shoulder to wrist, where my dive suit molded to my skin.

His rosary beads clack, brushing cool and solid against my fingertips. Stiffened card stock presses into my palm.

I look down.

It's a one way plane ticket for Las Vegas, Nevada, set to depart tonight.

Homesickness seizes me. Bands of iron – no, blue tipped claws, like the kind that took Sam – wrap around my chest and squeeze.

A fair breathed "thank you" and a swift peck on the cheek is all I manage for Tendo in return before I'm running.

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I can't (_won't_) find Sam in the Drift anymore.

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AN:

If you're confused at all think of this prologue as the beginning of the Pacific Rim movie (for now), put Mikaela and Sam in the place of the Beckets.

The next chapter isn't going to be divided up like this. Well. I actually haven't decided, let alone written it yet. So. It might be. (Insert halfhearted shrug here.)

Songs I fiddled with while writing this: (And, no, this won't be a song fic.)

_Twice – Little Dragon_

_I'll Never Forget You – Birdy_

_Soldier On – The Temper Trap_

_Beata viscera – Perotin, New York Polyphony_

_Jezebel – Iron & Wine_


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